*Photo from Canes Country*
Carolina leads series 3-0
This series has been one sided so far. Andrei Svechnikov had two assists, Sebastian Aho scored the game winning goal, and the Carolina Hurricanes defeated the New York Islanders with a 3-2 victory Thursday night on Long Island.
In a matchup of the two and 3 seeds of the Metropolitan Division, the series has been all Hurricanes, staking themselves to a 3-0 series lead, one win away from knocking out the Islanders and advancing to the second round. Svechnikov's two assists made him the Hurricanes only multi point player.
Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind'Amour said of the win that "The first two periods were OK and then we knew what was coming. They're going to give it everything they had. And that’s exactly what happened. But Freddie came up with a couple of huge saves and that's the difference in the game."
The Hurricanes staked themselves to an early lead on the road. Brent Burns gave the Hurricanes a 1-0 lead 4:46 into the game, assisted by Martin Necas and Teuvo Teravainen. Later in the first, Dmitry Orlov scored his first goal of the playoffs, doubling the lead to 2-0 with assists going to Svechnikov and Jake Guentzel.
Pierre Engvall got the Islanders on the board 2:48 into the second period, cutting the deficit to 2-1 on his first goal of the playoffs. At the 7:14 mark of the period, Aho scored with Svechnikov and Jalen Chatfield assisting to make it a 3-1 game. Brock Nelson scored to cut the deficit to 3-2. The 3rd period was scoreless as the Hurricanes held on to their lead.
Martinook said after the game that "It definitely wasn't as good as last game. We were down 3-0 at one point in Game 2, and then tonight we're up 3-0, I don't know what it was, 2-0 or whatever. But, it just looked different. Obviously, they're desperate. They're fighting as hard as they can and for us to be able to just hang in there and hold the lead there is big for us to be able to get the win and go up 3-0."
Getting the start for the Hurricanes was Frederik Andersen for the 3rd straight game, improving to a perfect 3-0 record in the playoffs. Andersen made 29 saves on the 31 shots he faced from the Islanders, giving him a .935 save percentage.
Starting between the pipes for the Islanders was Ilya Sorokin after sitting the first two games. Sorokin got the loss by allowing 3 goals on 14 shots. He was pulled after Aho's goal in the second period and replaced by Semyon Varlamov, who stopped all 8 shots he saw.
Islanders head coach Patrick Roy said of the loss that "I thought we had a really good start. Andersen made a really solid save on Dobson. It could have been a 1-1 game right there. I thought it was a hard-fought game. There were not many chances on both sides. It was a playoff game. We had a good push in the third. We had our chances, and the puck wasn’t bouncing our way."
Game 4 of the series is set for Saturday afternoon. The Hurricanes will go for the series sweep and punch their ticket to the second round, while the Islanders try to keep the series and their playoff hopes going with a win.
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